Ann Christys
The history of al-Andalus under the Umayyads (AH 138–c.422 / 756–c.1031 ce)1 is that of the ruling family and of their capital.
Apart from Córdoba, only Seville, Mérida, Toledo, and Zara-goza attracted the attention of the chroniclers, as the Umayy-ads struggled against rebels based in these cities; there were no new foundations until the ninth century.2 The scene moves from Córdoba only when emirs, caliphs, and their generals leave the capital to campaign against rebels, or against the “Galicians” and the “Franks” to the north. Geographers writing in Arabic from the tenth century onwards recorded some of the roads that these expeditions might have followed, in the form of itineraries that depict Córdoba as the hub of a network of roads that led to all parts of al-Andalus and beyond.
Yet it is not easy to move from itineraries to connectivity, to populate these roads, and the peninsula’s navigable rivers, with everyday traffic. This is not because the theme of connectivity
1 All dates are henceforth ce unless otherwise noted.
2 Eduardo Manzano, Conquistadores, Emires y Califas Los Omeyas y la for-mación de al-Andalus (Barcelona: Crítica, 2006), 248.
was unknown in medieval Arabic scholarship. An eastern ge-ographer, al-Ya’qūbī, writing c. 899 about Baghdad commented:
The two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, run along either side of Baghdad, and merchandise and provisions come to it by water and by land, […] such that every piece of merchandise carried to it from the eastern and western parts of the land of Islam and that which is outside the land of Islam reaches it. For [merchandise] is carried to [Baghdad]
from India, China, Tibet, [the land of the Turks], al-Daylam, [the land of] the Khazars, Ethiopia and the rest of the coun-tries […] as if all good things on earth are conveyed there.3 There is, as far as I know, no similar statement about Córdoba.
Details emerge from narrative and other sources of Córdoba’s importance as an administrative center, with a monopoly over the control of religion and education. The city attracted schol-ars from elsewhere in al-Andalus.4 Chronicles and other writ-ten sources, as well as sporadic archaeological finds, attest to the external trade of al-Andalus with North Africa and Egypt and even as far as Khorasan,5 mainly from the second half of the tenth century onwards. It is assumed that much of this trade served the capital; “Córdoba must have been a large city […].
3 لماكت ىّتح ىعسلا سريأب ارحبو ًاّرب يرلماو تاراجتلا اهيتأيف تازفاو ةلجد نماظعلاا نارهننلا هيتفاح في يرجي دنسلاو دنهلا نم اهيلا لمحي هّناف ملاسلاا ضرا برغو ملاسلاا ضوا نم برغلماو قشرلما نم لمحي رجتم ّلك اهي ضرلاا تايرخ اهيلا تقيس هّناك ىّتح ]…[ نادلبلا رئاسو ةشبحلاو“ رزًخلاو مليّدلاو كترلاو تّبُّتلاو ينصلاو … Al-Ya’qūbī, Kitāb al-buldān, in Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum, vol.
7, ed. Michael J. de Goeje (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 1892), 234; trans. Zayde Antrim, Routes and Realms. The Power of place in the Early Islamic World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 39.
4 Manuela Marín, “La transmisión del saber en al-Andalus (hasta 300/912),”
Al-Qanṭara 8, no. 1 (1987): 87–97.
5 Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, 2 vols, ed. Johannes H. Kramers (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 1938–1939), 105–6, 110, 114; translated by Johannes H. Kram-ers and Gaston Wiet in Configuration de la terre: Kitab surat al-ard, 2 vols.
(Beirut: Commission internationale pour la traduction des chefs d’oeuvre, 1964), 95, 109, 113.
The demands of such a large concentration of population must have drawn to it agricultural communities not only from the hinterlands, but also from more distant areas.”6 As Córdoba’s population is a great unknown7 and in “the absence of any ar-chaeological or historical study of the structure and organisation of Andalusi trade,”8 it is difficult to substantiate such statements.
The Arabic sources for al-Andalus rarely refer to Córdoba’s stra-tegic position as a Central Market Town with a major role in internal and external trade, or to the capital’s hinterland, served by local routes that would have connected it with nearby villages supplying the capital with food, building materials, and utility goods. There are surprisingly few references to the difficulties of travel, to seasonal hazards or to the risks of encountering ban-dits. These references will be reviewed in this chapter, although the main focus will be on the value of the Arabic geographies as evidence for travel in al-Andalus in the tenth century and for the importance of the other cities of al-Andalus in relation to the Umayyad capital.
The study of geography did not have a high profile in medi-eval Islam. Much of what we would call geographical informa-tion is scattered through works of a more encyclopedic nature.
Biographical details about Muslim scholars in other fields — his-torians, poets, and experts on law and theology — were assem-bled in dictionaries which often gave the scholar’s origin, dates of birth and death, education, a list of his works, and a number of more-or-less plausible anecdotes. In contrast, the medieval Arabic scholars who are now remembered for their writings on
6 Florin Curta, “Markets in Tenth-Century al-Andalus and Volga Bulghāria:
Contrasting Views of Trade in Muslim Europe,” Al-Masāq 25, no. 3 (2013):
305–30.
7 The figures quoted are often implausible: Antonio Almagro (“Planimetría de las ciudades hispanomusulmanes,” Al-Qanṭara 8 (1987): 421–48) estimat-ed that Córdoba’s wallestimat-ed madīna, with an area of 185 ha., might have held some 65,000 inhabitants, to which should be added an unknown number of people living in the more sparsely-populated suburbs.
8 Curta, “Markets in Tenth-Century al-Andalus and Volga Bulghāria,” 329.
geography are known mainly from manuscripts that carry their name either at the beginning or in a colophon, which may also give the date when the text was copied. Geography in the Is-lamic world, sometimes called jugrāfiya, is thought of as being part of the inheritance from the Greek world, translated into Arabic from the ninth century onwards.9 Its origins, which may be legendary, are with the caliph al-Ma’mūn (813–833), who gave his name to a geography (or possibly a map) which does not survive, although a later author claimed to have seen it.10 Yet the Persian inheritance was equally important. Geographers who claimed to be citing Ptolemy of Alexandria (c. 150) used Greek vocabulary — such as the term iqlim, or climate — even in works based on the Persian geographical tradition, which had its own way of dividing the world.
One of the earliest surviving Arabic geographies is the Book of Routes and Realms compiled by a Persian administrator, Ibn Khurradādhbih (c. 820–912), who served at the Abbasid court in Baghdad and Samarra, holding a title that translates as “head post master.” The Book of Routes and Realms11 is sometimes sup-posed to have been of practical value for those traveling the empire on the caliph’s service, but it was probably more con-cerned with displaying the extent of the caliph’s power.12 Ibn Khurradādhbih is not known to have surveyed the routes he
9 Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Transla-tion Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd/4th–8th/10th Centuries) (London and New York: Routledge 1998); André Miquel, La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du IIe siècle. Géog-raphie et géogGéog-raphie humaine dans la literature arabe des origins à 1050, vol.
1 (Paris: Mouton, 1967), 12.
10 Al-Mas’ūdī, Al-Tanbih wa-l-Ishraf, ed. Michael J. de Goeje (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 1894), 183–85.
11 Ibn Khurradādhbih, Al-Masālik wa-l-mamālik, ed. Michael J. de Goeje (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 1889), Charles Barbier de Meynard, “Le livre des routes et des provinces, par Ibn Khoradhbeh, publié, traduit et annoté par M. Barbier de Meynard,” Journal Asiatique 6, no. 5 (1865): 5–127, 227–96, 446–532.
12 Antrim, Routes and Realms, 102–6.
mentioned and he also included stories of real and imaginary travelers, among them Sallām the interpreter who set off to look for the wall that Alexander the Great had built to keep out Gog and Magog.13 Viewed from Baghdad, al-Andalus, which together with North Africa was known as the Maghreb, appeared remote and of little interest. Some Arabic geographies omit al-Andalus altogether and most have little information about Islam’s most westerly outpost. Ibn Khurradādhbih’s brief comment on the peninsula was not well-informed:
On the other side of the sea is the land of al-Andalus. Cór-doba is five days journey from the sea. From Granada on the coast of [the province of] Córdoba as far as Narbonne, the furthest extent of al-Andalus, where lies Franja, [the land of the Franks] is a distance of one thousand miles. Toledo, where the king resided, is twenty days’ journey from Cór-doba. In al-Andalus there are forty cities including Mérida, Zaragoza, Narbonne, Girona and al-Bayḍā. [Al-Andalus]
borders on Franja and the lands of polytheists that border it. The length and breadth of al-Andalus is a month’s march [in each direction]. It is fertile and abundant in fruit. On its northern borders with the Rūm (Christians, especially Byz-antines) and Franja are the mountains of al-Andalus, cov-ered in snow. From the furthest point in this direction is a mountain where a fire [emitting] rocks and earth burns and never becomes clear. The king of al-Andalus when it was conquered was called Lodarik, of the people of Isfahān and from Isfahān the people of Córdoba were called the Ispān.14
13 Emeri van Donzel and Andrea Schmidt with Claudia Ott, Gog and Magog in Early Eastern Christian and Islamic Sources: Sallam’s Quest for Alexander’s Wall (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2010).
14 لىا ةطانرغ ةبطرق لحاس نمو لايل سمخ ةيرسم لحاسلا ينبو اهنيبو ةبطرق يهو سلدنلاا دلاب رحبلا ءارو ام ةبطرق لىا ةلطيلط نمو كللما لزني ناك اهبو ةلطيلطو ،ليم فلا ةجنرف ليي مام سلدنلاا رخآ يهو ةنوبرأ ةجنرف سلدنلاا رواجتو ،اضيبلاو ةدنرجو ةنوبرأو ةتسقسرو ةدرام اهنمف ةنيدم نوعبرا سلدنلالو ،ةليل نوشرع مامو .هكاوفلا ةيرثك يرخلا ةيرثك ةبصخ يهو ،رهش في رهش نم ثركا ةيرسم سلدنلااو ،كشرلا دلاي نم اهلاو امو بارتو ةراجح في دقتت ران هيف لبج هجولا كلذ رخآ فيو جلثت سلدنلاا لابج نم ةجنرفو مورلاو لماشلا ليي
Some geographers did travel, and they emphasized what they had learned from this. Yet the relationship between book-learning and observation was not straightforward. A prominent ninth-century scholar, al-Jāhiz, described Kūfa in Iraq from his own observation, yet he wrote about another city, Baṣra, which is where he actually lived, by copying outworn clichés.15 Authors’
claims to eye-witness status do not always make their descrip-tions more reliable; hence the inconclusive debates over such episodes as Ibn Fadlan’s descriptions of a Viking burial on the Volga.16 Ibn Khurradādhbih’s combination of plausible — al-though often inaccurate — data, folk etymology creating spu-rious links between people and places with similar-sounding names, and tales of the downright fantastical is typical of geog-raphy in Arabic.
A second Book of Routes and Realms composed in the middle of the tenth century has a little more information about the pen-insula. It is attributed to al-Istakhrī (d. 957), who came from the town of Istakhr, built in the Sasanian period from the ruins of nearby Persepolis. Al-Istakhrī traveled, but not to the Maghreb, and it has been assumed that he copied his information on this part of the Islamic world from an earlier work or works. Al-Istakhrī emphasized the liminal position of al-Andalus, bor-dered on two sides by the lands of unbelief and on the other two sides by the Mediterranean and the Encircling Ocean, beyond which there was nothing. Yet he praised the cities of al-Andalus, above all Córdoba, and listed fourteen itineraries, of which ten start or finish in the capital:17
ةبطرق لها ىمس ناهبصاو ناهبصا لها نم قيرذول هل لاقي تحتُف ينح سلدنلاا كلم ناكو .ّطق أفصت لم نابسلاا. Ibn Khurradādhbih, Kitāb al-masālik, ed. de Goeje, 89–90; all transla-tions, unless credited, are by the author.
15 In Houari Touati, Islam et voyage au Moyen Âge: Histoire et anthropologie d’une pratique lettrée (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2000); trans. Lydia G. Co-chrane, Islam and Travel in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 105–18; Miquel, La géographie humaine, 1:38–45.
16 Miquel, La géographie humaine, 1:136–38.
17 Évariste Lévi-Provençal, Histoire de l’Espagne musulmane, vol. 3, 2nd edn.
(Paris: Maisonneuve and Larose, 1950, repr. 1999), 317–25.
Al-Andalus is wide, with many cities [and] very fertile […]
the greatest city is Córdoba […] none of the cities approaches Córdoba in size and the number of its stone buildings, which are buildings from the Jāhilīya (the period before Islam).
There are no new cities except Pechina and Santarem […]
where they weave hair [of camels and goats] into clothes and dye them to make costly items exclusively for the Umayy-ads.18
[…] The region of Elvira (near Granada) is known for its silk of the very best quality. In al-Andalus there are many gold mines and there are silver mines in Elvira and Murcia and at a place called Kurtash near Córdoba.19 […] From the Maghreb come black slaves from the land of al-Sudān (the blacks) and white slaves from al-Andalus, valuable female slaves — even those who use no art on their appearance sell for 1,000 dinars or more —, Maghrebi felts, riding mules, coral, ambergris, gold, honey, oil (coarse hide used for pol-ishing), silk, and sable.20
A reference to the Banū Ḥafṣūn, rebels against the Umayyads be-tween 880 and 928, and to the current ruler as ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III (r. 912–961) narrows the time that al-Istakhrī was writing to the second or third decade of the tenth century. This gives added credence to the itineraries that al-Istakhrī included, which are recorded in different ways. Sometimes al-Istakhrī merely stated the time needed for the journey — from Córdoba to Zaragoza,
18 براقي ام اهيف سيلو ]…[ ةبطرق عمست ىمظلا اهتنيدمو .ةعساو ةبصخ ندلما ةيرثك ةضيرع نادلب سلدنلاا ]…[ ةناّجب لاا ةثدحم ةنيدم اهيف فرعت لا .ةّيلهاج ةينبا ىهو ةرجح نم اهتينبا ثركاو بركلا مظعلا في ةبطرق ةّيما ينب كولم اهيلع رجحيو ]…[ نولتتف بايث هنم جسنتو زيزع وهو ]…[ ربو اهنم عقي ]…[ نيترنشو.
Al-Istakhrī, Kitāb al-masālik wa al-mamālik: Viae regnorum description dic-tionis Moslemicae, ed. Michael J. de Goeje, Bibliotheca Geographorum Ara-bicorum 1 (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 1873; repr. London: Brill, 1927), 41–42.
19 ةيحانب ة ّضف نداعم اهبو بهذلا نم ةيرثك نداعم سلدنللابو .هيرغ لىع مدقيو لضفي يرثك ريرح ةيربْلإ ةروكبو شترك هل لاقي عضوبم ةبطرق برقبو ةيسومو ةيربْلإ. Ibid., 47
20 ةيراجلا ذخات ةنمثلما يراوجلاو سلدنلاا نم ضيبلا مدخلاو نادوسلا دلاب نم دوسلا مدخلا برغلما نم عقي ناجرلماو جسرلل لاغيناو ةّيبرغلما دوبلا اهنم عقتو ثركاو رانيد فلا ماههوجو لىع ةعانص يرغ نع مداخلا رومسلاو ريرحلاو نفسلاو تيزلاو لسعلاو بهذلاو برنعلاو. Ibid., 45.
for instance, takes fifteen days — but other itineraries include the intermediate stations and the distances between them. He ended his description of the peninsula with the statement: “and these are all the distances of al-Andalus.”21
The most extensive description of al-Andalus in the Umayy-ad period was compiled by a Persian geographer from the gen-eration after al-Istakhrī. Born in Nishapur, Ibn Ḥawqal traveled widely in the Islamic world over more than thirty years and made his last trip, to Sicily, in 977. The purpose of his travels is obscure; it has been suggested that he was an agent or propagan-dist for the Fatimid rulers of Egypt, but he could also have been a merchant. His Description of the Earth was compiled towards the end of his life in c. 988. According to the introduction, the work was an account of “everything there is to know about each region: the various sources of riches, taxation, tithes, property taxes, itineraries, its imports, and commerce.”22 The work was illustrated with maps which defined “the location of every town in relation to its neighbour and its position in relation to north and south, east, and west.”23
Ibn Ḥawqal began with a eulogy of its climate and fruitful-ness that is reminiscent of Isidore’s Laus Spaniae:
Al-Andalus is one of the most magnificent of all peninsulas.
[…] I entered Spain at the beginning of the year 337 (11 July 948–30 June 949) when the ruler was ‘Abd al-Raḥmān III […]. Most of the land is cultivated and well populated. Ev-erywhere there are running waters, woods, and fruit trees, as well as sweet water. Abundance and contentment dominate all aspects of life, the enjoyment of goods and the means of acquiring wealth are common to rich and poor alike thanks to light taxation, the excellent state of the land and the riches
21 سلدلااب تافاسلما عماوج هذهف. Ibid., 47.
22 تاجاراخاو راشعلأاو تايابجلاو لاوملأا هوجو نم ميلقلإا كلذ هيلع لمتشي ام عماوج نم هتقرعم لىا جاتحُي ام تاراجتلاو بلاجلما نم هيق امو تاقرطلا في تافاسلماو. Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, 3.
23 اهبرغو اهقشر نم ةبترلماب اهنوكو اهبونجو اهلماش نم اهِعضومو اهرواجت ٍةنيدم نم ٍةنيدم ّلك عقومو. Ibid., 5.
of the ruler […] the abundance of his treasures and posses-sions […] and the customs revenue on the copious merchan-dise that comes in and goes out aboard ships.24
Ibn Ḥawqal’s comment on Córdoba is often cited:
There is nothing to equal it in the whole of North Africa or even in Upper Mesopotamia, Syria or Egypt, for the number of its inhabitants, its extent, the vast area taken up by mar-kets, its cleanliness, the architecture of the mosques or the great number of baths and caravanserais. Several travellers from this city who have visited Baghdad, say that it is the size of one of the two sides of that city […]. Córdoba is not perhaps equal to half the size of Baghdad, but is not far off being so. It is a city with a stone wall, with handsome districts and vast squares.25
Ibn Ḥawqal included two itineraries that are not in al-Istakhrī.
Both of them link Córdoba with Toledo, but in one case by a very roundabout route, as we shall see.
There are problems in accepting Ibn Ḥawqal’s description of al-Andalus as an eye-witness account, especially when read in conjunction with his description of Sicily, which is much longer and, unlike the account of al-Andalus, full of the sort of infor-mation that would strike a visitor. Ibn Ḥawqal characterized Sicily as an island well-situated in relation to al-Andalus, North Africa, and Byzantium, with mountains, castles, and
fortifica-24 وبأ اهب مّيقلاو ةئماثلثو ينثلثو عبس ةنس لّوأ في اهُتلخدو ]…[رحبلا رئازج سئافن نم يهف سلدنلاا اماف ةبذعلا راهنلااو رمثلاو رجشلاو ةيراجلا هايلما هيلع بلغيو لوهأم رماع اهثركأو ]…[ نمحرلا دبع فّرطلما مهنهم لهأ كلذ لانيف ةّماعلاو ة ّصاخلا في شىافلا كّلمتلاو ميعنلا لين لىا لاوحلأا عيمج في ةعسلاو صخرلاو نم ضبقي امو ]…[ هلاومأو هتنازخ روفوو ]…[ مهكلم راسيو مهدلاب حلاصو مهنؤم ةّلقل مهئانص بابرأو مهنع ةرداصلاو مهيلا ةدراولا بكارلما لىع ةرفاولا لاوملأا. Ibid., 108.
25 ةثرك في اهينادي ام صرمو مأسلاو ةريزجلاب لاو هيبش اهل برغلما عيمجب سيلو ةبطرق سلدنلااب ةنيدم مظعأو اهترفاس نم موق معزيو قدانفو تام ّماح ةثركو دجاسم ةرماعو ّلاحم ةفاظنو قاوسأ ةحسُفو ةعقُر ةعسو لهأ نم ةبيرق يهف دادغب ىبناج دحأك ُكت لم نإو ةبطرقو ]…[ دادغب يبناج دحأك اهّنأ ملاسلا ةنيدم لىا ينلصاولا ةحيسف باحرو ةنسح ّلاحمو ةراجح نم روس تاذ ةنيدم يهو هب ةقحلاو كلذ. Ibid., 111–12.
tions and mostly under cultivation.26 The sole city worthy of note is Palermo, which Ibn Ḥawqal described in a long section.27 In Palermo, according to Ibn Ḥawqal, there is a main mosque large enough for seven thousand worshippers, and there are more than three hundred other mosques. This compares with five hundred mosques in Córdoba — or so he has been told; he cannot verify this figure, whereas in Sicily he has visited most of them. Ibn Ḥawqal claimed to have seen as many as ten mosques built side-by-side, because every family who could afford to do so built their own. He also went into detail about such local mat-ters as the sources of water and the properties of Sicily’s onions, citing people he had met in Palermo as his informants — includ-ing, for one meetinclud-ing, the date and time of day and the fact that it was raining. In addition, Ibn Ḥawqal said that he had sum-marized both the merits and the faults of Sicily and its inhabit-ants in a “Book on Sicily.”28 His cursory treatment of al-Andalus, on the other hand seems to be based on information copied from his Iranian predecessors. Ibn Ḥawqal said that he took with him a copy of Ibn Khurradādhbih’s Routes and Realms.29 His own account “does not coincide with information given by Ibn Khurradādhbih,”30 although he cited the earlier work on the time taken to cross the peninsula. Some of the many similarities with al-Istakhrī’s work are discussed below.
Although Ibn Ḥawqal and al-Istakhrī’s geographies have dif-ferent titles, they are very similar in construction and in many places almost identical in wording. In an appendix to his four-volume study of medieval Arabic geography to 1050, André Miquel laid out the opening paragraphs of the two geographers’
works as they appear in the modern editions to demonstrate their close relationship.31 Elements of Ibn Ḥawqal’s account of
26 Ibid., 118; trans. Kramers and Wiet, 117.
27 Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, 118–28; trans. Kramers and Wiet, 117–27.
28 Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, 129; trans. Kramers and Wiet, 128.
29 Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, 329; trans. Kramers and Wiet, 322.
30 هبذادرخ نبا مسر قفاوي لا. Ibn Ḥawqal, Kitāb ṣūrat al-arḍ, 5.
31 Miquel, La géographie humaine, 1: 299ff and Appendix 1.
al-Andalus already present in al-Istakhrī’s text include a com-ment on the size of Córdoba. As al-Istakhrī had not seen Cór-doba, it seems that his information about al-Andalus came ei-ther from a written source or from a traveler, although he does not mention either of these. Ibn Ḥawqal’s text in turn served as one of the main sources for al-Idrīsī’s geography, composed for
al-Andalus already present in al-Istakhrī’s text include a com-ment on the size of Córdoba. As al-Istakhrī had not seen Cór-doba, it seems that his information about al-Andalus came ei-ther from a written source or from a traveler, although he does not mention either of these. Ibn Ḥawqal’s text in turn served as one of the main sources for al-Idrīsī’s geography, composed for